


Minutiae

by redishjenny



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Analysis, Lionwolf, M/M, POV Cole, POV first person omniscient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 18:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8763700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redishjenny/pseuds/redishjenny
Summary: In Cole's eyes, he could see their darkness painted into a beautiful menagerie of wild whispers and controlled chaos.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cullenrutherford](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cullenrutherford/gifts).



I see him, and he sees him, too. Their gazes ghost over, silent and fleeting like they didn't mean to. But they did. Must have. Seeing it in their heads is different than how they see it themselves. Mirrored seas pouring in from a frame that can't hold. The salt rips away paint and leaves it bare, exposed, splitting and splintering from the power of current emotions. It can't hold back crashing waves that burst against their sides, desperately aiming to pull them off their feet and along with feeling instead of thinking. But they both think; they don't feel. The drowning doesn't come naturally. They're survivors, but they don't know they can survive in one another. Standing alone doesn't always mean standing strong. Sometimes, the strength comes in letting themselves be pulled into the ocean.

When he says my name, he hesitates on the first sound. It catches in his throat but recovers quickly enough that no one ever notices. He wants to call out to another. He wants the name to tumble off his lips as often as the sun sparkles on the snowcapped mountains. It's a love different than what he feels for me. The overwhelming feeling of suffocation, claws grabbing and tugging at his chest so breaths gasp with every word, lost in his eyes. They tear and want with feelings he told himself weren't acceptable. Not now. He can't let the beast out, because all it wants is to drown in sand. Glistening sand. Crying sand. Tired sand. 

When he says my name, he hesitates with confusion and anger. Flashes of light and shocked gasps into the shaking boy he used to be. But he sees the calm, the smile, the patience of someone who understands. Confusion counters anger, blinding him to the sensation of what was before ripping into what is now. In his shouts, he sees someone he wants to know and love with a love different from the heartache of letters from home. This love touches him deep inside, but it doesn't tug or push. Soft fingerprints of one who knows but doesn't expect. He doesn't have to change. To breathe again, all he has to do is drown in rain. Glistening rain. Crying rain. Tired rain.

The first meeting under the guise of duty and responsibility. Fixing what was broken and forcing a plan from the pieces. A breach in a world that wasn't perfect, but it was theirs.

He sees it like glass shattering on the floor, thinking he wanted to see the individual pieces. But the glass was sharp. Dangerous. It cut and tore, making bloody feet leaving bloody paths from a place of the gods to a place for the gods. A vase can't hold water when it's shattered on the ground. It can't save or quench or grow or spread without its pieces supporting one another. Starvation, dehydration, the end to all and the beginning of nothing. That's why he wanted to put the pieces back together. Every cut against pale fingertips shows his dedication and hatred for his own actions. Bloodied fingers like bloodied feet.

He sees it like glass shattering on the floor, another mistake that may not have been his, but it's his duty to fix. The glass was sharp. It cut and tore, making bloody feet leaving bloody paths from one failure of the past to failures of the future. A shattered vase can hurt the innocent who don't see. Points and edges grab at bare flesh, ripping focus from forward smiles to pain, pulsing. He knows the hurt too well to let it happen to bright eyes and naive thoughts. That's why he wanted to put the pieces back together. Every cut against calloused fingertips stops the fear of his own torture from ever happening to anyone else. Bloodied fingers like bloodied feet.

They meet like glass shattering on the floor. He is what he promised to end, telling himself he can't get attached to a walking dead man. He is what hurt him before, what makes his hands shake and nights sleepless. 

The sun rises and falls with Thedas breathing its last breaths. The waking hours are too much, a plan lifetimes in the making stripping him of everything he used to be and creating someone he never thought he would need. Spending too long lamenting the past, forcing himself to take control of the future. A world's destruction on the horizon, another stab in the ribs from convulsing breaths just trying to set everything right. Soon, the dark nights will give way to darker. He knows. But he won't stop there. Life, true life will return to the world whether it wants it or not. The grip on his staff a silent promise to the future.

The sun rises and falls with Thedas breathing its last breaths. The nightmares are too much, eating away at his soul and leaving him a stinging, open wound crying out to be burned closed. Spending too long lamenting the past, forcing himself to take control of the future. Refusing to be the cowering body he was when his life wasn't allowed to be his own. Gasps in the night from reoccurring torture that should have finished with the end of the tower, with the end of Kirkwall. But the terrors continue, robbing him of safety and comfort. And in the face of fear and fault, he turns away. The grip on his sword a silent promise to the past. 

The sun drags desperately through the sky as they slowly and carefully piece Thedas back together, mindful of each others' weaknesses and fingertips. One looks on with determination that the world will never shatter again. One looks on with determination that the world will be shattered just the right way. With a warm smile and patient hand, the nightmares give way to daydreams of a life he knows he can't have. With slow acceptance and reassurance, the waking hours give way to promises in the Fade he knows will never be real. 

Inside, he crawls to the end of the story, beaten and wounded but victorious. Here is where he leaves it all behind. Here is where he sheds his mask, finally taking his last steps to righting wrongs and writing the story the right way. Disappearing without words or breaths, he sails the ocean of his misdeeds, navigating to the new world he swears will bring the questions to the answers he has. A world for his people won't be a world for his love.

Inside, he crawls to the end of the story, beaten and wounded but victorious. He stands in an empty place, left behind by promises that revealed themselves as a mask. Abandoned but changed, betrayed but whole again. He is finally free of his past, taking firm and solid steps into the land of the future. But the future will hurt just as much as the past. A world for his love won't be a world for him. 

It's in the cuts on their fingertips. It's in how they say my name. It's in how they piece Thedas back together. It's in how they shake inside when they touch. It's in the silence as they stand next to one another, closer and farther than they've ever been before. It's in the minutiae. 

The page turns to an inkless chapter... and we wait.


End file.
